Kate just runs from her past on ‘Lost’

Boy, does that Kate have some daddy issues.

Wednesday's episode of "Lost" tried throwing everyone for a loop. When Kate blew up her mother's house, you figured it was her stepfather passed out inside, or maybe her mom's abusive boyfriend — but by hour's end, it was clear that things in Kate's family were a wee bit more complicated.

For that matter, life in the hatch became a good deal more convoluted, with a bunch of questions that won't be answered before Jan. 11, when the next new episode is due.

This week provided the long-awaited backstory on the fugitive with the captivating smile, and yes, it was arson that got Kate on the lam in the first place. That and the fact she tried to punch out a U.S. marshal (Edward Mars, who would eventually track her down in rural Australia and haul her onto doomed flight 815), then absconded with his car.

Granted, the man Kate killed, Wayne, wasn't much of a father figure. He beat up Kate's mother, and was a drunk who made eyes at Kate. But was that enough to make Kate torch the house? (The Zippo she played with at the beginning of the episode was a nice little tipoff.)

Kate's mother didn't think so — and later ratted her daughter out — after Kate walked into the Iowa diner where her mom worked and handed her an insurance policy. When she asked what Kate had done, her daughter replied, "I took care of you, Ma. I gotta go. You're not going to see me for a while."

And how.

Kiss me, Kate
Back on the island, it was time for the Sawyer-Kate-Jack triangle to boil over. Jack finally pried Kate away from Sawyer's side, but as she was gathering fruit, a woozy, ailing Sawyer asked Jack for her, then uttered the three most improbable words ever to come out of that con man's mouth: "I love her."

Shortly after, it was Jack who found Kate in the woods, embraced her as she cried, and got a big wet one planted on him ... before Kate ran off.

What had her spooked was a black horse standing in the woods.  Lest you think this is another polar bear moment, it showed up again as Kate later led Sawyer outside the entrance to the Swan station.

"You see that?" Kate asked.

"If you mean the big-ass horse standing in the middle of the jungle, then yeah," Sawyer replied.

Either Kate's not crazy, or they both are (a distinct possibility), or you shouldn't go judging sanity by whether people see random animals appear on Crazymaking Island.

"You know that horse, Freckles?" Sawyer continued.

A horse is a horse ...
Of course she did.  She'd seen the same horse briefly after the marshal's car hit an animal (not, as best freeze-frame can reveal, a horse) while taking Kate to her arraignment.  The accident stunned the marshal, and Kate finished the job by knocking him out and driving off.

Next stop Down Under? Nope. Kate went to find her father, army sergeant Sam Austen, in a recruiting office.

Well, not quite her father. As she told him, she discovered he was stationed in Korea until four months before her birth. (If she meant during the Korean war, Kate's a lot older than we figured.  We assume Austen was posted to the DMZ in the 1970s. Also, an image of Sayid was visible for a split second on the recruiting office's TV.)

Kate revealed her true father was ... Wayne, which makes her big hidden "Lost" secret that she burned her own father to death.  So much for Edward Mars' "nice cornfed farmgirl" theory.

In case the island love triangle wasn't trouble enough, Kate's tender moments with Sawyer took a turn for the bizarre.  After putting Patsy Cline's "Walking After Midnight" on the turntable, Kate made cute ... until Sawyer woke up, grabbed her throat and asked, "Why did you kill me?" (Or until Kate imagined it.)

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